A cool fridge

There are some places an LCD screen makes no sense, like on a vent hood. But there are other places where the inclusion of an LCD screen is so natural that it practically seems obvious once you see it. Like on the fridge.

Samsung isn't the only one to come up with this idea, but it is a nice addition to the company's new French door fridge, announced on November 3. The RFG299 has a 7-inch LCD screen just above the ice and water dispenser. The screen offers one-touch access to calendars, schedules, showcase photos, nutrition facts, and unit conversions, as well as controlling the fridge temperature and monitoring the water filter status.

In other words, you can clear off all the artwork, invitations, photos, and sticky notes all over your fridge and enjoy the sleek look of, well, a clean fridge front. (Hint: Take snapshots of your to-dos and kids' artwork and incorporate them into the photo slide show.)

Although the fridge fits in a standard footprint, it offers 28.5 cubic feet of internal storage; that's the industry's largest. By using high-rate urethane insulation technology, the company was able to reduce the refrigerator walls from 2.04 inches to 1.38 inches, leaving you with an extra 3.5 cubic feet for your favorite foods.

Interior LED lighting lets you see clearly, and the fridge and freezer sections are cooled separately to prevent odors from spreading. The fridge comes in stainless steel and retails for about $3,100.

A 1950s-style refrigerated vending machine

Anyone can open the fridge and grab a soda. And even the minifridge under the bar doesn't have quite the cachet it used to. So what's the solution, if you'd like something that sets your kitchen apart from the ordinary?

How about this 1950s-style refrigerated vending machine from Nostalgia Electric? With this in your kitchen, you can serve drinks in real style.

The fridge loads easily--just open the front door and pack in up to 18 cans of your favorite soda. When you push the button under your beverage of choice, the can rolls to the bottom for quick retrieval. Refrigeration keeps your cola icy cold for that store-bought feeling.

The machine isn't full size, so it should fit in your space. It's about 12 inches wide, less than a foot deep, and just over 2 feet tall. Pricing for the machine varies online--you can find it anywhere from $139 plus shipping to $199 with free ground shipping.

If you're looking for a creative gift idea, this vending machine could bring (cold) cheer to someone on your holiday list.

NuCool technology refrigerator

It's nice when you can buy something you want and get something that makes you feel good about yourself, too. If you're in the market for a compact fridge to fit in a small space--a bar, a dorm room, or an office, for example--consider a coolant-free 1.7 cubic foot fridge featuring Haier America's NuCool technology.

NuCool is a new technology that lets your compact fridge run as low as 37 degrees (colder than past refrigerant-free models allowed). So the only green you'll see will be the eco-friendly kind, not the disgusting mold-in-the-back-of-the-fridge kind. NuCool doesn't use a compressor and runs quietly--and it does it all with ultralow power consumption.

You can find the compact fridge in white or black. It's lightweight and easy to move and can store 2-liter soda bottles. The door can open right or left, and the adjustable thermostat and auto-defrost features will keep all your foods at the proper temperature. The fridge retails for less than $100, which makes it an affordable gift for the college student in your life.

A good appliance for Cola lover like me

Even though my grocery store often puts 2-liter bottles of soda on sale, I generally buy cans instead. That's because I don't drink soda fast enough to go through a full 2-liter of soda before it loses its fizz. It's so wasteful to throw away half-full bottles, so I'm willing to pay a little more for cans so that I get to drink all the soda I paid for. The Refrigerator Fizz Saver Dispenser makes it possible to take full advantage of bottled soda. The dispenser screws onto the top of a 2-liter bottle. You then flip it over and use the dispenser as a base, flipping a switch to fill glasses with soda. Because the bottle is upside down, carbonation can't escape upwards as it might with just an open bottle. Your bubbles will last through the whole bottle. The fact that it's much easier to pour soda is just a bonus. The Refrigerator Fizz Saver Dispenser is small enough that you can still slide your soda into the fridge--avoiding worries of melting ice diluting your drink. The dispenser is priced at $12.98 and can be reused with a simple rinse. I'm thinking that I might need a second, so that I can have both of my favorite types of soda on tap all the time.

Keep your wine in a special position

Keeping wine chilled has been a little bit of a problem for me. If I try to put more than a bottle or two in the refrigerator, I don't seem to have room for everything else that should go in there. But my kitchen barely has room for me--it certainly doesn't have the space for a standalone wine cooler. I'm not about to give up any of my counter space for anything like that, either. Solutions seems to have found the one spot in my kitchen that I can fit a wine cooler in, though: the Under-Cabinet Wine Cooler mounts to the bottom of a cabinet, just like a microwave. I know my kitchen has a cabinet this wine cooler will fit under, and I bet most other kitchens are the same.
The Under-Cabinet Wine Cooler holds up to four bottles of wine at a time and you can easily control the temperature for either red or white wines. This wine cooler uses thermoelectric cooling--there's no danger of a compressor's vibrations disturbing sediment. You aren't limited to mounting the wine cooler under your cabinets, either; it can mount alongside a cabinet if that works better in your kitchen. The Under-Cabinet Wine Cooler is priced at $199.

HRB 1110 refrigerator

With its new line of fully integrated refrigerators, Liebherr is offering state of the art appliances: among other innovations available in the HRB 1110 and other refrigerators in the line is Leibherr's patented climate system. The Biofresh system controls temperature and humidity, helping food to remain fresh up to three times longer than normal refrigerators.
According to Leibherr, it has also worked hard to make sure that its integrated refrigerator line scores high Energy Star ratings and, in fact, the company's entire refrigeration product line exceeds the new guidelines for Energy Star. Leibherr is also the refrigeration manufacturer to bring its products into full RoHS compliance worldwide. The RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment) guidelines guarantee that Leibherr uses materials with minimal environmental impact, as well as reducing the hazardous materials that might wind up in your home.
Integrated refrigerators from Leibherr, such as the HRB 1110, have a capacity of 7.1 cubic feet. The accompanying NoFrost Freezer has an additional 2.1 cubic feet of capacity. They are meant to be built into a kitchen wall but do have a variety of attractive doors available.

Kitchen Revolution: No Refrigerator

How green is your kitchen? If you’re part of “small segment” of the eco-conscious, you don’t have a fridge.
Here in New York, it’s not uncommon to help the environment by burning less natural gas; you eat out and use your oven as it was meant to be used in tiny apartments – to store sweaters. But some folks – apparently, ones who give up readily cold beer and live in chilly climes where they can store their mayo on the porch – have gone the extra mile by disconnecting their refrigerators.
“It seems wasteful to me to use even an Energy Star-rated fridge,” one satisfied, fridge-less woman, Rachel Muston of Ottawa, tells the newspaper, “because I’m getting along fine without one.”
It's not a radical idea to want to reduce the carbon footprint of your kitchen – alt-energy companies are building solar refrigerators, and even Einstein and fellow physicist Leo Szilard patented three prototypes that operated without moving parts. But is it really necessary to junk your icebox in the process?
Consider this: refrigerators use the least amount of energy of all common household technologies, according to data released last month by the Department of Energy. Home heating uses the most, followed by, as a group, lights and appliances including dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, computers and TVs. Water heaters make up the third largest share of household energy, followed by air conditioners. So exactly how many people in the U.S. have actually sworn off refrigeration? Deanna Duke of Seattle, who runs an eco blog called The Crunchy Chicken where visitors have debated the practice, tells ScientificAmerican.com that she's not aware of a formal stat. But of the 50,000 unique visitors to her site, she estimates that roughly 11 have disconnected their fridges. Another eight, she says, "sounded willing."
Duke published a blog post last month listing reasons why forsaking the fridge isn't worth it: additional tailpipe emissions from those extra supermarket runs, food that goes bad before you eat it, and the extra packaging from buying more frequent, smaller quantities. Her online adversary, a blogger known as "Greenpa," has rebuttals, among them, that city dwellers can easily pick up food on foot, and that many foods you think require refrigeration (such as butter, eggs and cheese) don't.
Other greenies aren’t convinced that life without a fridge makes sense. “It’s silly not to have one,” Texas mom Gretchen Willis told the Times, “considering what the alternative is: drinking up a gallon of milk in one day so it doesn’t spoil.”